A respite for the poor makes way for offices
DEVELOPER MUST HELP WITH RELOCATION
OF LONG-TERM RESIDENTS
By Daniel DeBolt

The Pacific Euro Hotel is not
the sort of place most people
would want to stay. The smell
of cigarette smoke permeates the
air, and many of the rooms share a
bathroom. A bulletproof window
protects the front desk, and the
general manager is known for her
bulldog personality.
But the downtown hotel at 891
West Evelyn Ave. is a welcome
respite for many who are down on
their luck, and some have stayed
for more than a few years. The
rent is as low as $1,188 a month
for a small room with a TV, a
microwave and a fold-out bed.
No questions are asked about
credit or rental history, and there
is no waiting list — as there is
with subsidized housing. Several
families with children have even
found refuge in the hotel.
A couple in their late 20s, David
and Michelle, say they moved
here in November with their preschool-aged son after a family
dispute left them nearly homeless
last year. They say they know of
two other families in the building,
one with three young children.

David says that few landlords
would rent a studio apartment to
a family of three with no credit
history, and they could afford
nothing more. David works as a
chef and Michelle stays home with
their son.
“This is the first time I’ve lived
in Mountain View,” Michelle says.
“This is the first time I’ve lived
somewhere and I actually like it.”
Soon, David and Michelle and
everyone else in the hotel will have
to move. The City Council has
approved a new four-story office
building development on the hotel
site and an adjacent vacant lot.
Demand for offices downtown
is huge. Downtown’s popularity
with tech startups has filled nearly
every available space, creating a
downtown office vacancy rate
that is now less than 1 percent,
says Mike Cobb of Colliers International.
The hotel is a short walk away
from busy Castro Street, the
downtown transit hub, the social
services agency on Moffett Boulevard, and the Community Services Agency, which gives food
to low-income residents several
days a week. David takes the train,

Local district produces
more college-ready grads
than county, state
By Nick Veronin

S

eniors from Mountain View
and Los Altos high schools
graduated at higher rates last
year than their peers in the county
and throughout the state, and a
greater percentage of those graduates were college-bound.
About 92.5 percent of the seniors

INSIDE

in the Mountain View-Los Altos
Union High School District graduated last year. That’s 14.2 percent
more than the 78.3 percent of
seniors who graduated countywide,
according to a recent report from
the Santa Clara County Office of
Education. That’s also 18.1 percent
better than the statewide gradua-

MICHELLE LE

David, Michelle and their son have lived at the Pacific Euro Hotel since November, but will be forced to leave
when the hotel is razed. They say their son’s safety and the low rent are key reasons they like living at the hotel.

which runs in front of the hotel, to
his job in San Jose.
The couple has lived in more
affordable San Jose, but the apartment complex they lived in had
tion rate of 74.4 percent.
On top of that, 66.4 percent of the
class of 2010 graduated with all the
necessary requirements — known
as “A-G requirements” — to move
on to a University of California or
California State University school.
Countywide, only 50.5 percent
of seniors graduated with those
requirements in 2009-10.
“I’m pleased,” Superintendent
Barry Groves said. “Given our student population, I think we’re doing
exceedingly well.”
Still, 69 the 921 enrolled seniors
See GRADS, page 11

GOINGS ON 22 | MARKETPLACE 23 | REAL ESTATE 25 | VIEWPOINT 13

too many problems, they say.
“You don’t see as much violence
out here as you do in San Jose,”
Michelle says. “You don’t see as
many police officers out. You

don’t see as many stabbings here
or shootings here. I worry about
that when it comes to my son.”
See HOTEL, page 6

Google lines up big
Sunnyvale campus
COMPANY EXPECTS 2,900 EMPLOYEES ON SITE BY 2013
By Daniel DeBolt

H

aving hit the limit for rapid
expansion in Mountain
View, Google has made its
first move into Sunnyvale, leasing
a large campus that could house up
to 2,900 employees.
Google confirmed on Aug. 12
that it had leased the 716,000-

square-foot Technology Corners at
Moffett Park. The 26.5-acre campus is on Innovation Way and 11th
Avenue, neighboring the Moffett
Towers and the southeastern corner
of Moffett Field.
The Class A campus was built
in 2000 by the Jay Paul Co. and
See GOOGLE, page 10

a p r. c o m
Go to open.apr.com for the Bay Area’s only
complete online open home guide.

Now that summer is almost
over, what do you wish
you had done?
“I wish I didn’t waste time in my
business training program; I wish
I had gotten through the program
a whole lot faster. I could have
been in my office making a whole
lot more money.”
Christopher Nwogu, San Jose

“The one thing I wish I would
have done more this summer is
spend more time outside and
work less.”
Sarah Bloom, Mountain View

“I wish I had learned more this
summer.”

Start
Smiling
More
New
Year,
New
You.

Treat yourself to a complimentary consultation with Dr. David R. Boschken
You can have the beautiful, straight smile you
deserve without braces with Invisalign® or Invisalign
Teen® from one of the world’s foremost Invisalign®
orthdontists,
Orthodontists right here in Mountain View.
1700 people
Dr. David R. Boschken has helped over 1400
smile beautifully with Invisalign. He is an Elite
Premier Invisalign Provider which means he is in
the top 1% of all Invisalign® doctors in the
country. Trust your smile to a top doctor,
Dr. David R. Boschken.

$

750 Off Invisalign

As $
low
as

®

99 per mo*
*with your good credit

Invisalign®, the cle

ar alternative to bra

100 W. El Camino Real, Suite 63A
Mountain View, California 94040

ces

650-964-2626

2010

Robert Adams, Mountain View

Are you past due for your check-up and cleaning?
“I wish I had read more books this
summer.”
Heidi Lim, Sunnyvale

· Service – At smiles dental, we

believe in treating our patients to the best
of dentistry and technology with ﬁrst class
personal service.

Various gold jewelry was stolen
from a home in the 300 block of
Anna Avenue sometime between
10:45 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 8,
police said.
The burglar, or burglars, apparently entered the house through
an unlocked window, according
to Mountain View police spokeswoman Jaime Garrett.
“We encourage residents to make
sure that the windows and doors to
their home are locked when they
aren’t home and to secure all valuables,” Garrett said.

Shop Local Online Sales Representative
(20-30 hrs per week)
Embarcadero Media is seeking a self-starter and motivated individual interested in helping build an innovative new
online program that helps local businesses market themselves to the local community. Our Shop Local websites,
powered by ShopCity.com, offer a unique and simple platform for business owners to promote their merchandise, make
special offers, announce special events, maintain customer lists and engage in social network marketing on Facebook
and Twitter.
The Shop Local Sales Representative is responsible for generating revenue by selling businesses subscriptions/
memberships on the Shop Palo Alto, Shop Menlo Park and Shop Mountain View websites and helping to increase
awareness about the program in the broader community.
Speciﬁc duties include:
* Heightening awareness of the Shop Local program through distribution of marketing materials to local
businesses
* Directly selling Shop Local packages by phone and in-person to businesses within the local community, with
an emphasis on locally-owned establishments
* Increasing the use of the site by assisting businesses in setting up proﬁles, posting offers and understanding
the features of the site
* Assist in the marketing of the site through attendance at business and community events
* Coordinate sales efforts and work with Embarcadero Media sales team as a resource person on the Shop
Local program

The Shop Local Sales Representative is supervised by the Multimedia Product Manager.
Compensation is an hourly rate plus commissions for all sales. Schedule is ﬂexible, but the target number of hours per
week is 25 (ﬁve hours per day.)
This position is currently considered temporary, exempt and non-beneﬁted, but may evolve into a permanent position
as the program develops.
To apply, submit a letter describing why this position is a good ﬁt for your background and experience and a resume to
Rachel Hatch, Multimedia Product Manager at rhatch@embarcaderopublishing.com

4

■ MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE ■ AUGUST 19, 2011

Another victim has come forward, claiming she was also robbed
of jewelry by a Mountain View man
arrested Aug. 6 and charged with
committing a string of similar robberies, police said.
The 38-year-old woman reported
the robbery after she heard about
the arrest of three men that police
believe worked together in a necklace-snatching spree during July
and August, according to Jaime
Garrett, a spokeswoman with the
Mountain View Police Department.
According to Garrett, the woman
was robbed while she walked on
Rengstorff Avenue near California
Street just a few hours before the
men were arrested. She accurately
described a necklace police found
on Antonio Sotelo-Lozano, the
18-year-old East Palo Alto suspect
charged with the robberies.
Sotelo-Lozano was apprehended

after he allegedly hid in the bathroom of an apartment on Latham
Street after police chased him from
a car, which matched the description of a getaway vehicle used in a
second necklace robbery.
Police also arrested Alexander
Avalos and Miguel Zamora, both
19 and from East Palo Alto. The two
men were in the car with SoteloLozano when police stopped it near
the scene of the later robbery. They
were arrested without incident.
Garrett said that an additional
robbery charge has been levied
against Sotelo-Lozano.

‘WELL-SHAVEN’
A stark naked, “well-shaven”
young man asked a woman in a
Mountain View parking garage for
directions on Aug. 8, police said.
According to Mountain View
police spokeswoman Jaime Garrett, the 29-year-old victim was
walking to her car in an underground garage located at 555 W.
Middlefield Road at about 4:25
p.m. when the man approached
her, in the buff, and asked her the
way to Castro Street.
The woman then screamed,
ran to her car, left the garage and
called police, Garrett said. The
police report described the man
as “well-shaven” and about 20
years old with dark hair. “I have
no idea what that means,” Garrett
said, referring to the description
of the man’s shaving habits.
“He made no sexual advances,”
Garrett said. “He was merely asking for directions, it appears. We
have no leads on who it might
have been.”

The Aug. 12 story on the new
Foothill campus mistakenly
said the Cubberley property is
owned by the Palo Alto Unified
School District. The Cubberley
Community Center property is
owned by the city of Palo Alto,

not the school district. It was
traded to the city in exchange for
eight acres at Terman that the
school district then reopened for
Terman Middle School.

Former MV city manager helps
deliver city of Bell from scandal
KEVIN DUGGAN RECRUITED TO LEAD CITY MANAGERS ASSOCIATION
By Daniel DeBolt

M

ountain View’s widely
respected former city
manager Kevin Duggan has found a new calling
after retirement, and it includes
helping to turn things around in
the scandal-ridden city of Bell.
Duggan was hired on as West
Coast director of the International City/County Managers
Association in May after planning a more relaxed retirement;
he was considering upgrading
his house and sitting on some
local boards and committees to
stay involved locally. But when
he applied to be a volunteer
mentor for the ICMA, Duggan

was asked to apply for the top
ICMA West Coast director job
instead.
“I think I felt retired for three
and a half weeks,” Duggan said.
Not long after taking the job,
Duggan said he was struck by
the difficulties that the citizens
of Bell were having in reforming
their city. Several city officials
there were jailed on corruption
charges last year after the Los
Angles Times revealed that the
city manager and several council
members in the small, workingclass city in eastern Los Angeles
County were paying themselves
salaries as high as $1.5 million a
year.
“An email had gone out for an

interim city administrator and
no one applied,” Duggan said.
“This was a very reform-minded
City Council and a citizenry that
wanted to recover. It struck me
they weren’t having success.”
Duggan got ICMA’s executive director on board, and
“we agreed to help them (Bell)
find somebody immediately,”
he said. Duggan helped bring in
Bell’s interim city manager for
the last month, Ken Hampian,
a retired San Luis Obispo city
manager.
Hampian was put to work
immediately after the council
met him; he was paid only a
See DUGGAN, page 9

SETI raises $200K to stay operational
NICK GONZALES

By Nick Veronin

T

he Mountain View-based
SETI Institute, which had
to shutter many of its
alien-seeking antennas earlier
this year due to the loss of
federal and state funding, has
announced that it will reopen its
42-dish array in Northern California after raising more than
$200,000 from the public.
According to Seth Shostak,
a senior SETI astronomer, the
money was raised in less than two
months through the SETI Stars
Program, and some of that money
came from Jodi Foster, who
played a scientist searching for
alien life in the film “Contact.”
Shostak said that SETI intends
to combine the money with
funding from the Air Force,
which uses SETI’s telescope to
track satellites. If the Air Force
money comes through, which
Shostak believes is likely, SETI
will be able to open the array in
a month or two and keep it open
until the end of the year — giving the organization time to raise
more money.
SETI had to shut down the
array on April 22, due to federal
and state cuts. Back then, institute director Jill Tarter told the
Voice that a “perfect storm” of

economic conditions, including
the recession, had contributed
to a dearth in funding at the
University of California, Berkeley, which runs SETI’s Allen
Telescope Array — which is
named for Microsoft co-founder
Paul Allen and is located at
the Hat Creek Radio Observatory between Mount Lassen and
Mount Shasta.
The radio telescopes, which
have been in “hibernation” since
the end of April, are used to
perpetually listen for intentional
or inadvertent transmissions
produced extra terrestrial beings.
SETI has yet to observe any such
transmissions, but according
to Shostak, it would be “very
strange” if Earth were the only
place intelligent life exists.
“The data are suggesting that
there are about a billion habitable worlds just in our galaxy,”
Shostak said, referring to planets
within the Milky Way that have
the potential to support life. “And
there are a hundred billion other
galaxies if you don’t like ours.”
Shostak understands the reasoning behind the cuts. “Economic times are tough,” he
said, noting that programs like
SETI are often the first to be
scaled back in dire fiscal times,
as people perceive his institute’s

goals to be non-essential.
But, both he and Tarter said
that the work they are doing is
vital.
“When you think you’re the
only kid on the block, and you
all of a sudden find out that
there are other kids on the block
— that is important to know,”
Shostak said. “It affects your life
forever, and it affects every generation that comes after you.”
“The human race has been
asking this question for millennia,” Tarter said. “We have been
asking ourselves how we fit into
the cosmos for as long as we’ve
had recorded history.”
Taking a long view of human
history, Tarter spoke whimsically about the potential for SETI
to bring about a fundamental
paradigm shift in human consciousness.
“Ultimately, I think SETI is
incredibly important to help
people everywhere step back a bit
and look at themselves, and look
at humanity, with a more cosmic
perspective,” Tarter said. “From
space you don’t see international
boarders.”
Tarter said that if SETI were to
find conclusive evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth, it would
“trivialize the differences
between humans overnight.”
V

Public can review compensation
info on controller’s website
FOOTHILL-DE ANZA DISTRICT TO SUBMIT FIGURES BEFORE
APRIL DEADLINE, BUT SOME DETAILS AVAILABLE NOW
By Nick Veronin

O

n Aug. 2, state controller
John Chiang, along with
the chancellor of California’s community colleges,
Jack Scott, sent a letter to all
72 community college districts
throughout the state asking
them to submit information
on pay scales for employees. It
was part of Chiang’s continuing effort to make the payment
of government officials and
employees more transparent.
The letter began by explaining that the state has created the
Government Compensation in
California website in response
to the scandal in the city of Bell,
which “understandably raised
concerns regarding the fiduciary practices of other public

agencies throughout California and increased the public’s
appetite for more information
regarding the spending of taxpayer money.”
The website — described as a
“one-stop repository” for salary,
pension and other key compensation data for all state and local
officials and employees — has
already compiled information
on more than 1.2 million positions throughout the state, but
the list is not yet complete. With
72 districts and 110 colleges
throughout the state, California’s community college system
represents a large piece of a puzzle Chiang hopes to assemble in
order to give the people of the
Golden State a clearer picture of
See WEBSITE, page 10

AUGUST 19, 2011 ■ MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE ■

5

-PDBM/FXT

MICHELLE LE

A view of Pacific Euro Hotel, with a poster of the future office complex that will replace the hotel in
downtown Mountain View.

HOTEL

Continued from page 1

Good for Business. Good for You.
Good for the Community.

6

■ MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE ■ AUGUST 19, 2011

Michelle says she feels safe in the
building —the general manager
won’t let anyone in who isn’t greeted

by a tenant in the lobby.
“I like it because the manager
runs a tight ship,” Michelle says.
“You can’t just say ‘hey, I’m here to
see so and so, they are expecting
me.’ She will tell you ‘you have to
call on the room phone’,” and visit-

ing a tenant is allowed only “if they
come out to get you. If not, you have
to wait out there in front. We know
that no one can just come back
there and get to our kids. Our kids
can’t get out and get to the street.
Continued on next page

-PDBM/FXT
Continued from previous page

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why I like it here.â&#x20AC;?
â&#x20AC;&#x153;I really donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think they should
tear it down,â&#x20AC;? David says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
been a home to a lot of people. For
a lot of families that are struggling
and need a place to go, this would
be a good place.â&#x20AC;?
Though City Council members
in recent years have wrestled with
how to adequately compensate
low-income apartment residents
who are displaced by development, no one expressed concern
about the people who live in the
Pacific Euro Hotel when the office
building was approved.
Relocation questions
Residents of the hotel may
be asked to leave the Pacific
Euro Hotel anytime now, but it
remains unclear how they will
be compensated for being displaced.
Buried deep in the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
conditions of approval is a
requirement that the developer
help relocate long-term tenants
of the hotel. It must be done
according to a complicated and
little-known state law: The Uniform Relocation Assistance and
Real Property Acquisition Policies Act of 1970. When the City
Council approved the building,
council members did not ask

city staff to elaborate on those
requirements, as they often do.
It is clear, however, that longterm tenants â&#x20AC;&#x153;shall be compensated for relocation and shall be
relocated to suitable housing in
decent, safe and sanitary conditionâ&#x20AC;? according to the law, the
condition states.
At press time, it was still
unclear to city staff exactly
what the relocation requirements
would be and who would be
considered long-term tenants. It
is the community development
departmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s responsibility to
make sure the relocation compensation requirements are met.
â&#x20AC;&#x153;We would not allow them to
take action on demolition without satisfying the requirements
of the project,â&#x20AC;? said city planner
Rebecca Shapiro.
In a previous instance where
the council was concerned about
tenant relocation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the redevelopment of a 64-unit apartment
complex at 291 Evandale Ave. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;
concerns were expressed about
implementing tenant relocation
policies before tenants moved
out and could not be found.
Developer Daniel Minkoff did
not respond to requests for comment before the Voice went to
press, but said in April that the
project would begin construction â&#x20AC;&#x153;soon.â&#x20AC;?

JOIN BEFORE THE END OF THE
MONTH AND RECEIVE A FREE
BODY BALL AND TRAINING DVD
9